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Women in Africa “Lean In,” Taking a Page from Sheryl Sandberg’s Book
April 24th, 2013With the recent launch of Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, discussion of the value of women in the workforce has blossomed. It’s clear women make great entrepreneurs—something the women of Africa have known for centuries but is often overlooked. Sandberg encourages women to realize their potential in the [...]
The Challenge of Providing Clean Water in Rural Africa
March 22nd, 2013Every two years the World Health Organization takes a look at access to improved drinking water around the world. The good news is that an additional 2 billion people gained access to improved water between 1990 and 2010, including 273 million in Sub Saharan Africa. The bad news is that some 780 million people have [...]
Despite Conflict in Northern Mali,Village Needs Are Met by Aid for Africa Charity
February 8th, 2013Recently, the African country of Mali has made international headlines as French and Malian forces seek to oust Islamist rebels from the northern part of the country. The conflict in the north has disrupted economic development projects throughout the country, including for Aid for Africa member Medicine for Mali, which works in Mali’s southwest. [...]
Rehabilitation Center in Central Africa Gives Traumatized Children a Chance
January 30th, 2013The plight of child soldiers and children affected by conflict remains a major concern throughout Africa. Even reports from the recent fighting in Mali highlight how children have been forced to join the conflict. But nowhere has the problem been greater than in northern Uganda, ever since Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) [...]
Today is A Day to Recognize Girls
October 11th, 2012A global campaign to support the empowerment of girls has led to the United Nations designating October 11th as the very first International Day of the Girl. Aid for Africa and its members applaud this effort and support girls throughout Sub Saharan Africa through programs focusing on social justice, education, health, and economic empowerment of [...]
Aid for Africa Scholar Helps Improve Nutrition in Northern Tanzania
August 20th, 2012As the summer draws to a close, Katrina Brink, the first Aid for Africa Scholar supported through the Aid for Africa Endowment for Food and Sustainable Agriculture at the Friedman School at Tufts University, is wrapping up her work to improve nutrition in northern Tanzania though gardening and poultry farming. Brink, a master’s student at [...]
Ending the Transmission of the AIDS Virus from Mother to Child—It Just Might be Possible
July 20th, 2012In the United States and Europe, every day one child is born with HIV. In Africa, every day 1,000 children are born with HIV. mothers2mothers is changing that. mothers2mothers (m2m), an Aid for Africa member, was born in a clinic in South Africa in 2001. There a HIV-positive woman explained to another young woman with [...]
The Cradle Project—A Reminder of the 12 Million African Children Affected by AIDS
July 13th, 2012As thousands of delegates to the 19th International AIDS Conference gather in Washington, DC, later this month to review progress made in the fight against HIV and AIDS around the world, Aid for Africa and its member organization Firelight Foundation will ask them to remember the children of Africa orphaned by AIDS. This reminder will [...]
Landscape Approaches Ease Conflicts and Promote Sustainable Development
June 29th, 2012Farmers versus environmentalists. Rural food alliances versus tourism. Ranchers versus private industry. Can we build alliances between them in Africa to increase food production? Boost rural incomes? Restore degraded land and rivers? Aid for Africa member EcoAgriculture Partners, says, “Yes, we can.” EcoAgriculture Partners is part of Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative, a [...]
Wolves, Okapis, and Painted Dogs – Oh my!
June 6th, 2012African wildlife often conjures images of rhinos, zebras, or elephants. But there are hundreds of animal species that call Africa home. For instance, did you know that wolves are native to parts of Africa? Or that the okapi is a relative of the giraffe, but has the stripes of a zebra? As we observe World Environment [...]
Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund Spotlight–Catherine Koyiah
May 30th, 2012Catherine Koyiah, College Sophomore: Beating the Odds Each year in Sub Saharan Africa, millions of girls fail to reach their potential. Barriers to education are often to blame. These barriers include the fees and costs of supplies needed to attend school. Although low when compared to costs in the United States, they are high when [...]
“Lost Boys” Clinic in South Sudan Celebrates Five Years of Health Care
May 23rd, 2012If you have been following the news from South Sudan you know this new nation confronts many challenges, including threats of renewed warfare, extreme poverty, and a shortage of government services. But there are reasons for optimism, thanks, in part, to organizations like the John Dau Foundation, an Aid for Africa member. It took five [...]
Keeping Population Growth in Check: How a High School Education Changes Everything
May 4th, 2012The benefits of educating a girl in Africa are many—learning to read, write, and do simple math in primary (elementary) school are the first steps to better health, future employment, and improved self esteem. Many African countries have made progress in closing the gap between girls and boys in school. In Kenya, almost half of [...]
Earth Day—Uniting Voices Worldwide for a Sustainable Future
April 21st, 2012Did you know that on April 22, 1970—the first Earth Day—20 million Americans demonstrated from coast to coast in the United States to call for a healthy, sustainable environment? For many, it marked the beginning of the environmental movement. The brainchild of Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who was concerned about mainstream [...]
Will Technology Feed a Warming World?
April 18th, 2012A recent blog noted that climate change will negatively affect African agriculture, particularly production of the most important staple crops– millet, cassava, rice (West Africa), maize, bananas and plantains. More than 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is also threatened. As the earth warms, weather patterns shift, causing droughts and floods that threaten agriculture. Scientists [...]
World Health Day: How Can Sub Saharan Africa Have 25 Percent of the Disease Burden But Only 3 Percent of the World’s Trained Health Workers?
April 6th, 2012On World Health Day, April 7, think about this: Sub Saharan Africa has 11 percent of the world’s population, bears 25 percent of the disease burden in the world, but has only 3 percent of the world’s trained health workers. Sub Saharan Africa has about 18 medical doctors for every 100,000 individuals. The United States [...]
World Water Day: Imagine if You Woke Up Tomorrow and No Water Flowed from Your Taps
March 22nd, 2012Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and no water flowed from your taps. How far would you have to walk to get to the nearest fresh water source? How long would it take you? And what things could you have done during that time if you didn’t have to devote it to your very survival? [...]
Empowering Development through Bicycles, World Bicycle Relief Reaches Half a Million People
March 16th, 2012What is black, shiny, holds up to 200 pounds, is easy to repair, and transforms lives? A bicycle designed and built for Africa by World Bicycle Relief! The Aid for Africa member has just put its 100,000th bike to work in Africa. What can 100,000 bicycles do? Transform 500,000 lives. In the hands of students, [...]
Jumpstarting Africa’s Small Businesses
February 29th, 2012In 2009, the proportion of people in Sub Saharan Africa living on less than $1.25 a day was just below 50 percent – the highest of any region in the world. For an individual lacking a formal education and living in a rural area in Africa with little infrastructure to provide access to outside employment, [...]
Singing the Praises of Wildlife Conservation
February 22nd, 2012Aid for Africa does not often enough sing the praises of its members who are working to conserve wildlife in Sub Saharan Africa. But, as you are about to read, Isaac Munene actually does sing about the good work of Aid for Africa member Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. Aid for Africa’s members working on wildlife conservation [...]
A Valentine to You from Africa
February 9th, 2012For many, Valentine’s Day is synonymous with chocolate— a product of the cacao tree. Almost 70 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from Ghana, Ivory Coast and a few other West African countries. Along with coffee and cotton, cacao is one of Africa’s most important commercial crops. Because cacao is a critical crop to farmers [...]
Trash is Not Trash Until It Is Wasted
January 26th, 2012Many of us recycle our bottles and waste without ever seeing the tangible benefits. Although recycling is practiced far less commonly in Sub Sahara Africa, the recycling efforts of two Aid for Africa members are having profound effects on the communities they serve. In the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, Aid for Africa member Carolina [...]
Looking to a Brighter Future in Africa
January 3rd, 2012When thinking about Africa, the facts that come to mind are often not good. Most Africans live on less than $2 a day. The average life span in many countries is only 50 years. Famine and starvation persist. The list goes on and on. In an article at the end of last year, The Economist [...]
Fulfilling the Principles of Human Rights Day
December 10th, 2011It is hard to believe that 63 years ago today, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration has served as the foundation for an ever-expanding system of rights and protections for the world’s citizens, including the vulnerable, disabled, and downtrodden. Reading this 63-year-old document in 2011, it is amazing to [...]
Drilling for Water in Africa’s Most Remote Regions
December 5th, 2011They did it! World Hope International recently dug its 700th well and achieved its goal of providing 500,000 people in Sub Saharan Africa with clean water! World Hope and its partners in the Himutwe Wamalale district of Zambia dug well 700 in support of 273 people. Reaching this milestone is even more significant because providing [...]
Remembering a Legacy of Planting Trees and Building Lives
November 4th, 2011In our previous blog post on the 2011 International Year of the Forest we highlighted the importance of forests in Africa, which account for the livelihoods of more than half of Africa’s population according to experts. Trees for the Future (TREES) has been instrumental in maintaining this synergy by helping people living on degraded land [...]
Turning the Millennium Goals Into Reality: Goal 5 – Improve Maternal Health
October 24th, 2011In the fifth blog post in our series about the UN’s Millennium Development Goals we focus on Millennium Goal 5: Improve maternal health. The UN goal is to ensure that by 2015 there is universal access to reproductive healthcare and to reduce by three quarters the number of women dying from childbirth by 2015. In [...]
Community-Based Conservation Efforts to Protect Wildlife
September 22nd, 2011Tomorrow, September 22, is World Rhino Day, when international attention is raised about the senseless slaughter of these amazing animals due to the mythical belief held by many that rhino horn contains magical healing properties.
Eliminating the Obstacles Keeping African Children Out of School
September 14th, 2011This September throughout the United States, school-age children picked up their books and lunch money and headed off to school. They look forward to doing that every year through their time in high school and, for many, through college. Children of Africa are not so fortunate. Of the 68 million children worldwide not enrolled in [...]
Education on Overdrive—Creating Sustainable Schools
August 26th, 2011In Uganda and Tanzania, students supported by Aid for Africa members are learning more than reading, science, and math. They are learning how to make their schools sustainable. For the last three years in Rakai, Uganda, students and teachers at the Sabina School, an elementary boarding school supported by Aid for Africa member Children of [...]
Fighting East African Famine Requires both Immediate and Long-term Solutions
August 1st, 2011Food aid has begun to reach people in East Africa who are severely afflicted by the worst drought in 60 years. This emergency food aid is vital to prevent thousands more deaths in Somalia and to support the refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia that are now home to hundreds of thousands. But longer-term, structural [...]
Zeroing in on Farming in Africa as a Key to Long-Term Development
June 1st, 2011At a recent meeting of the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, Bill Gates spoke of a new effort to help the farmers of Africa and South Asia build better lives for their families. Telling the story of a Rwandan farmer, who is also a single mother of two, Gates described her 20-year struggle to feed [...]
Turning the Millennium Development Goals Into Reality
May 19th, 2011Did you know that the Millennium Development Goals are the most ambitious, targeted, and comprehensive set of objectives ever created to eradicate extreme poverty? Established by the United Nations in the year 2000, they set eight specific targets that all world governments agreed to meet by 2015. They are: Cut extreme poverty and hunger by [...]
Fostering Development from within a Community—The Value of Small Nonprofits
May 13th, 2011Most people who view the Kibera slum of 1 million–with its burgeoning youth population–on the outskirts of Nairobi see a powder keg waiting to explode. A few others, like Rye Barcott, see a place of possibility and untapped potential. Barcott, the founder of Carolina for Kibera and author of It Happened on the Way to [...]
Remembering Less Fortunate Mothers
May 6th, 2011Being a mother is never easy, but in Africa it takes on a whole new dimension. Save the Children’s new report on the best and worst countries for motherhood says that eight out of the ten worst countries for mothers are in Sub Saharan Africa. It is not surprising when you consider that one in [...]
Providing Hope to Ivorian Refugees in Liberia
April 15th, 2011The conflict in the Ivory Coast has led to the fleeing of more than 80,000 Ivorian refugees to its neighbor Liberia. In the midst of this humanitarian disaster Aid for Africa member Africa Development Corps, also known as Visions in Action, is overcoming enormous obstacles to restore the refugees’ dignity and hope. Many of the [...]
Focus on Women: Realizing a Girl’s Potential and Fulfilling her Aspirations through Education
March 30th, 2011When Ann Musabe was 16 years old she was in high school in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and in need of support. She found that support through Aid for Africa member Growth Through Learning. The organization provided a scholarship that allowed Ann to attend the St. Joseph’s Girls Secondary School, where she excelled. That [...]
World Water Day: Spotlight on Saving Lives with Safe Drinking Water
March 21st, 2011On March 22, World Water Day, Aid for Africa asks you to remember that there are 1.1 billion people in the world who lack access to safe drinking water – one-third of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unsafe drinking water kills 6,000 people – mostly children – each day and causes more deaths annually than [...]
Focus on Women: Changing a Young Woman’s Story through Education
March 18th, 2011Caroline Kashinin Senteu is one of only a handful of Maasai women in Kenya with a college education, and although her story began as the story of most Maasai women, Caroline’s determination to get an education gives it a different ending. Caroline was born in 1985 in Loitokitok, Kenya, to illiterate and very poor parents [...]
Planting the Seeds Toward a Brighter Future
February 25th, 2011Tamiru Gerite lives with his wife and five children in the village of Bedengeltu, in Southern Ethiopia. He works hard as a farmer, but his subsistence fields generate little income. Last year, Aid for Africa member Trees for the Future and their local partner, Greener Ethiopia, began working with Tamiru to start a seedling nursery [...]
A New Model for Helping South Africa’s Most Vulnerable Children
February 2nd, 2011The founders of the Ubuntu Education Fund in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, realized early on that that a fresh approach was needed to help the thousands of vulnerable South African children they met; children who were orphaned by AIDS, suffering from emotional trauma of rape, HIV positive, and more. Instead of making one-time donations that [...]
Southern Sudan Votes for the Future and Prepares for the Challenges
January 10th, 2011In Sudan, the south and north fought a civil war for more than three decades. Beginning January 9 through the 15th, the south is voting to become an independent state. With few roads to rural areas, very little health care, and an education system in its infancy, the new government will have its hands full. [...]
Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund — Helping girls go to school, stay in school, and succeed in life!
September 16th, 2010Life is tough for many poor girls in Africa. Culture and tradition often keeps them at home while their brothers go to school. Some girls are forced to marry when they are as young as 13 in exchange for a few cows. If a girl convinces her family to send her to a “free” government [...]
Africa’s growing economic muscle tells only part of the story
August 5th, 2010Africa is making progress economically, according to a new report by McKinsey & Company. With combined gross domestic products across the continent of 1.6 trillion dollars in 2008, Africa is on par with Brazil. Improved political stability and economic reforms seem to be part of the reason, and as Africa continues to expand its presence [...]
Scientific Research Underpins Development Advancements
June 16th, 2010An elephant trampling a farmer’s field is a frequent problem in many parts of Africa. One elephant can destroy a farmer’s entire crop. Recent news reports suggest that research scientists may have found an eco-friendly way to keep the elephants out. Scientists have learned that elephants are afraid of swarming bees. So farmers may be [...]
Embracing Local Community Needs is Key to Conserving Africa’s Wildlife
April 16th, 2010Today, in his column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about the demise of the African wild dog, also known as the painted dog. Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands throughout Africa, the painted dog is about to disappear—only a few thousand remain in four countries.
Working to Save Africa’s Rich Biodiversity
February 25th, 2010The United Nations has named 2010 International Biodiversity Year, acknowledging the continued loss of plant and animal species around the world from population growth, urbanization, deteriorating habitats, invasive species, and more. Last year, the U.N. reported that 17,000 animal and plant species are at risk of extinction and some 60 percent of our planet’s ecosystems [...]
Alternatives to Orphanages Bring Hope to Africa’s Vulnerable Children
December 19th, 2009The United Nations estimates that more than 55 million African children have lost one parent and that almost 15 million of them have lost a parent to AIDS. Orphanages are often seen as a solution for these orphaned and vulnerable children. In a recent article in the New York Times, Celia Dugger suggests an alternative. [...]
Surviving Drought through Small Businesses
November 19th, 2009According to Reuters some 23 million people are in need of food aid in East Africa because of severe drought. Last month the Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development asked the international community for aid to feed 6.2 million people affected by the drought. In Kenya, hundreds of thousands of cattle and goats have [...]